Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/158

 In some cases Asclepiades prescribed the drinking of wine (particularly the wine of Cos) to which sea-water had been added; his idea being that the addition of salt would enable the wine to penetrate farther into the tissues and thus open the pores more freely. This idea of added salt was not original with him, for Pliny states that in certain parts of Greece it was customary to place casks filled with new wine in the sea and to leave them there for some time. The wine, it was claimed, was rendered by this procedure mature and pleasanter to drink. They called wine thus treated "Thalassite wine" (from the Greek word "thalassa," sea). In cases of jaundice he occasionally recommended the drinking of plain sea-water, whereby the bowels were stimulated to act more freely. Under ordinary circumstances he employed, for the relief of constipation, clysters, but he was sparing in their use.

The remedial measures enumerated above, together with dieting, are those upon which Asclepiades chiefly relied in his practice. In acute diseases he made very little use of drugs that were to be taken internally, but in maladies of a chronic character he employed them quite freely. Gargles, poultices and inunctions are mentioned among the external remedies which he often prescribed.

Further Particulars Regarding the Life and Career of Asclepiades.—Le Clerc furnishes a number of details which throw additional light upon the career of Asclepiades. During the latter's lifetime his professional reputation was very great. Lucius Apuleius, the famous Roman satirist and rhetorician, and a contemporary of Asclepiades, calls him the Prince of Physicians, second only to Hippocrates the Great; Scribonius Largus, a Roman physician and writer, who flourished during the reigns of the Roman emperors Tiberius and Claudius (37-54 A. D.), speaks of him as a great medical author; Sextus Empiricus, a writer remarkable for his learning and acumen, who lived in the first half of the third century A. D., calls him a physician of unrivaled skill; and Celsus, who is termed the Cicero of physicians, on account of the purity of his Latin, holds him in high esteem as a medical authority. His fame as a